"I still don't see what's so wrong with your room here being the same as your old one," Mark said. He grabbed a wooden spoon from the side and started to stir whatever it was he had in the pan.

"She's just being difficult." Eva glared at me.

"I'm not being difficult! I just don't want to grow too comfortable here if we're going back to London."

"Except we don't know when that will be," Enid pointed out. "The Great War lasted four years, this one might last longer. You might as well get comfortable, Sybil. Especially if your mum is so set on you staying here.

I huffed and rolled my eyes, snatching the tea towel off my shoulder and grabbing one of the many dishes that Eva had washed. Even though I knew they were right, I didn't want to admit that we were most likely going to be stuck in the country for potentially years to come. Not much had happened on the war front since Warsaw had fallen in September and now that we were inching our way towards November, it felt like the war might go on forever.

After almost two months of living out in the middle of nowhere with not that much to do, Enid had the bright idea for us to do something for our hosts. We had managed to get them all under one roof at the Wentworth house - Enid's host family - for a grand evening meal prepared for by us. When I say us, I mean Mark who had taken control of everything and appeared more in his element in the kitchen than he had on the farm. At least he hadn't almost burnt this one down. Yet.

Just a few days before, Mr Goodwin and I had spent the day painting the walls of my bedroom a pale blue that he had picked up from the village. The colour was almost identical to that of my room back home and although I was glad to no longer be sleeping in a dingy room, I didn't like how similar it all looked. I would have been fine if the walls had been painted white, it would make more sense for any future guests after I had left, but I guessed Mr Goodwin didn't see it that way.

"I thought you would have taken to being here more than any of us," Eva said. She took the towel from me to dry her hands.

"Why?"

She shrugged. "The amount of work you get to do here, the fact you can wear slacks which you were begging your mum about for months until she bought you one pair. You're more in your element here than we are but even Mark has taken to it quicker than you."

"It's not that I haven't taken to it, I enjoy the work and everything. I just don't want to get too comfortable. This isn't home, London is."

"That doesn't mean this can't be a home. Maybe you need to stop resisting everything and just accept it. Your mum and your house will still be there when the war ends, but that doesn't mean you can't embrace being here, especially since the Goodwin's are going out of their way to make you happy. They didn't have to ask what colour you wanted your room to be, but they did." She hit me lightly with the towel. "Just embrace it for what it is, Syb."

I snatched the towel off her and returned to the stack of dishes that seemed to be never-ending, Mark never did any simple cooking. Eva walked across the kitchen to peer over Mark's shoulder and left me to dry the dishes on my own. Although I hated to admit it, Eva was right. We had no idea how long this war would go on for and I wasn't helping anyone by resisting or refusing to accept my place with the Goodwin's. They, especially Mr Goodwin, were trying and my resisting wasn't helping.

Maybe I just needed to do whatever everyone else was doing and embrace my time with them, consider my room and my life with the Goodwin's a second home until I could return to my real one. Mum, my house, my life, would still be in London by the war's end and I doubt even Mum could begrudge me for enjoying my time with them. She was the one who wrote to me telling me that I needed to get used to staying with the Goodwins, perhaps it was time to accept that.

When I finished drying all the dishes and putting them away - we didn't want to leave the Wentworth's with a mountain of dishes - I joined the others around the stove where Mark was painstakingly trying to perfect his gravy. He had already made some for the inside of the pie that would be the centrepiece of whatever it is he had been creating. None of us dared to even breathe too loudly because we knew how badly it would go for us, we had learnt long ago to never disrupt Mark when he was in the zone.

"And it's done," Mark said after taking a taste test from the pan.

"Finally, I'm starving." Eva leans against the counter and rolls her head back, her stomach grumbling and trying to join in with the conversation.

"Let's get all of this on the plate before Eva keels over."

"Ah, all of you can stand back. This needs to be a work of art and there is only one person up to the job," Mark lightly shoved us all out of the way to get to the line of plates on the counter.

"We'll be here for another three hours if that's the case." Eva rolled her eyes.

"Hey!"

"I love you, Mark, but you know it's true. Let's just get it on the plate and go and eat. I don't think the stablehand would be pleased if I ate one of his horses," Enid said.

Mark huffed and stepped aside, allowing us to assist him in getting all the food on the plate so that we could actually start eating it and not just stand there and smell it which is what we had been doing for several hours. Eva was almost drooling when we put everything on the plate whilst Mark just watched, occasionally mumbling something about how we were doing it wrong and that our plates looked like disasters. He had the last say, though since we let him put the gravy on the plate.

Once we had finished putting everything on a plate - an assortment of vegetables, some potatoes and Mark's pie - we got some help from the people who worked for the Wentworths to carry it all upstairs. I could hear the low chatter of conversation from the main room as we laid out the plates in the dining room. There were so many rooms in the Wentworth house that it would be easy to get lost, like most places in the country.

When the table was set and all the plates down, we summoned all four of our host families together so we could finally eat, Mark's precision meant that we were almost two hours late for lunch. No one had much of a need for talking since we had all waited so long to eat and we were all ravenous. Mark basked in the comments from all of the host families with even the Bradys being surprised by his culinary skills, that might be because they hadn't let him near the kitchen since he almost burnt it down.

"So, how long have you all been friends?" Mrs Wentworth asked. She had one of those posh voices that instantly made you feel beneath her.

"Eva and I have been neighbours for pretty much our entire lives and we met Enid and Mark in school when we were four or five," I said.

"So you've been friends for a while? It must be strange being so far from one another after growing up so close to one another."

"It just means we have more to talk about," Mark said with a mouthful of food.

"That's disgusting," Enid cut in. "At least swallow your food before you speak."

"He's like a Mother bird feeding his young," I muttered.

Eva spluttered in an attempt to laugh and ended up choking on the food she had in her mouth, almost sending half of it flying across the table. She took a long sip from her glass of water and then couldn't look at me for several minutes in case she started laughing again. Mrs Wentworth gave her an unapproving look but we both tried to ignore it and just buried our faces in our food whilst Enid discussed her times at school and how she was getting on in a brand new place.

As the meal went on, we were all questioned about what had been up to since our train arrived back in September. Everyone else had rather simple and somewhat expected answers what with Enid's return to school, Eva helping in the post office and Mark helping around the Brady farm. They were all perfectly reasonable answers but to the other adults, other than Mr and Mrs Goodwin, my work on the farm was a little unexpected.

"So what do you do on the farm?" Mrs Wentworth asked.

"I've been helping out with the repairs on the pens and just general farm maintenance although we've done a fair amount of work on the house itself since the weather doesn't exactly support outside work." As I spoke, heavy raindrops crashed against the window to illustrate my point a little more.

"Where did you learn the skills to do such work?"

"My dad taught me most of it. He thought I needed to know some more practical skills."

"And you're both fine with her helping out so much?"

"She's probably the best help we could have received. The farm and the house look almost unrecognisable now and most of it is down to having Sybil around. It will look like a brand new farm this time next year," Mr Goodwin said.

"I had my reservation at first since we were both so set on the idea of getting a young boy to help us, but Jonathan's right. The farm looks a lot better than it did and it's nice to have some sunlight coming in through the windows, even if there is a lack of it at the moment."

I exchanged a sideways glance with Eva who raised an eyebrow and offered me a sort of 'I told you so' smile. In the time I had been with the Goodwins, I had yet to receive any sort of positive comment from Mrs Goodwin about my work on the farm or in general. Maybe she was just doing it to show off to the others or just not appear all that bitter about having not ended up with the boy they wanted. Still, I wasn't about to turn down a compliment.

The rest of the lunch went by without an incident with all of us eating the food until we couldn't eat any more of it. There wasn't all that much to discuss other than the weather and the Goodwins future plans for the farm which didn't consist of much other than finishing the work and running it as a basic family farm.

We ended up running out of conversation topics not long after finishing our main course and ate the desert of a chocolate brownie and ice cream in near silence. The entire affair became rather awkward after that point and I was more than ready to go home. When the rain had cleared up, we bid our farewells to everyone and stepped outside, making a somehow hasty walk away from the house so we didn't get caught in another rainstorm.

Neither Mrs Goodwin nor Mr Goodwin spoke until we were at least halfway back to the farmhouse.

"Sybil, we wanted to discuss something with you," Mrs Goodwin said.

"That sounds ominous, am I going to like this or should I start walking in the other direction?" I said, laughing a little.

"With any luck, this will be a positive." Mr Goodwin smiled. "We were talking the other day about the fact that you have been staying with us for almost two months and yet we have been keeping with the formalities for that entire time."

"You're starting to ramble, Jonathan."

"Right, to the point. We thought it was time to drop the formalities and the whole Mr and Mrs thing you've got going on. Both of us want you to feel comfortable with us and those titles don't really help with that. So, from now on we are giving you permission and encouraging you to call us by our given names."

"We're no longer Mr and Mrs Goodwin, just plain Jonathan and Barabara. It seems to be something a lot of host families are doing and it makes more sense since we don't know how long you'll be with us."

"I think I can get behind that. It may take some getting used to, though," I said, a little taken aback.

"Take all the time you need but we hope this will allow you to feel a little more comfortable with us."

"I'm sure it will."

~~~

A/N - Here we are! Chapter Seventeen of The Last Train Home! Still not sure on the length, it'll be over 50 chapters I reckon xD

Questions! Do you think Sybil's fears are logical? Will things change now that the formalities have been dropped?

Comment below!

First Published - July 7th, 2021